The last few weeks were a blur filled with much travel and little sleep. When we are running hard and fast, what we remember is fascinating, and I am reminded that our memories are selective and prone to error. When we retrieve memories, the brain can alter them based on current beliefs, emotions, or suggestions, leading to distortions of our memories.

At a recent board dinner, a new executive went to great lengths to tell a story about his days as an investment banker working on the first-ever bond offering for a company and how hard that offering was to pull off. Still, the banker was willing to work on the offering so long as the company’s founder/CEO would go to every pitch meeting asked of him. He then recalled that the founder/CEO attended over 20 meetings, which allowed for a successful offering. It turned out that the company’s COO went to all the pitch meetings, but the CEO didn’t go to any of them.

The storyteller was genuinely baffled and was in disbelief. We all laughed at the revisionist history, and I was fascinated by how this could have happened. It turns out stories may start grounded in our memories and understanding of history, but they become myths and legends over time as we exaggerate selective information to make them more memorable.

In the above story, the bond offering was difficult to accomplish and not something a banker who worked on the offering would easily forget. The details of the pitch or who was at which meetings were not essential to encode and store in long-term memory, but it helped make the story more “credible” if the CEO had to be at every pitch.

Memories and myths are powerful. Shockingly, both are selectively based on facts. As Mark Twain said, “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” However, we want to control the narrative and tell our story our way. If we want that, we must win because the victors write history.

Be legendary and encode your selected memories in the myths of tomorrow.